Kweku Opoku-Agyemang works on the political economy of development—how both economic and political factors affect social change, with current emphasis on technological innovations. Before coming to the University of California, Berkeley, Kweku was a Research Scholar with the Agricultural and Applied Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kweku Opoku-Agyemang holds a doctorate in Development Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in Economics from Ohio University, and a B.A. in Economics with Geography and Resource Development from the University of Ghana. Kweku was selected as a National Service Person with the Ghana Government, where he worked on scaling up a national HIV/AIDS policy across the country.
Dr. Opoku-Agyemang’s current research focuses on the impact of mobile technologies on governance in African countries. In Ghana, he is working on survey experiments and impact evaluations to study how mobile innovations can improve policy effectiveness overall, and the state of rural and urban utilities and public services in particular. He has been invited to discuss his research with various stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development as well as urban district assemblies in Ghana. In addition to other ongoing projects at the intersection of technology and African development, Kweku is also doing research on econometric and statistical methods for using big data in impact evaluations.
In Fall 2014, Opoku-Agyemang developed and taught a new course for UC Berkeley on “Poverty, Technology and Development.” The course engaged students on the ongoing impacts of mobile and other technological innovations on African and global development.
